


All in the Valley of Death Rode the Six Hundred

by likeadeuce



Category: Iron Man (Comic), Marvel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-15
Updated: 2010-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-07 07:21:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony believes in ghosts. Six hundred and twelve of them.  (Based on Marvel's "Civil War," issue 1)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All in the Valley of Death Rode the Six Hundred

Damien Sharpe wanted to be an astronaut. He checked out every book that the Stamford Elementary School library had, about the space program. His hero was Buzz Aldrin, the man in the famous photograph because the name sounded like "Buzz Lightyear," from his favorite Disney film.

When Tony Stark heard this story for the first time, he was seated on a front pew of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Stamford, Connecticut. It was one of dozens of stories; one of hundreds of names. Tony remembers fixating on the wrong thing, that he had no idea who Buzz Lightyear was, but he remembered Peter Parker calling him that once, while Tony was wearing the Iron Man armor. He had always intended to ask the kid what in the hell he was talking about. But there were always so many things like that with Peter, and he had never gotten around to asking. He hadn't thought about it until this moment, at a memorial service for six hundred and twelve Americans who died because some amateur jacked up on stims decided to be a hero for the television cameras. He would see Peter back in Washington, Tony thought. He could ask him then.

It was something to think about. Better than thinking about the names. Lily Escobedo, age nine and a half, already an accomplished tap dancer. Madison Hicks, just turned seven, loved the the Spice Girls and her hamster, Orlando. Jean-Baptiste Mousset, a Haitian refugee who worked as a janitor to help his twin daughters pay their tuition at Rutgers.

Six hundred and twelve American names. Nitro, the man who had done this, had a lot to answer for.

"_And so we ask you, Lord, for your mercy,_" said the priest, "_Not only for the souls of those children who perished, but for the super-people whose carelessness caused this tragedy._"

Tony heard those words, and he felt a chill. "Super-people," plural. Not only Nitro, but the New Warriors. This was going to be the rhetoric of the coming season. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be a mutant. Next time he saw the man, Tony would ask Logan.

The service ended, at last, and Tony got to his feet, following the flow of bodies toward the door, but his mind already back in Washington. There would be rough days ahead, there was no question, and there had never been a more critical juncture for the selection of proper tactics --

"_Tony Stark!_" He turned toward the voice, and warm stream of spittle collided directly with his cheek. A woman he had never seen in his life stood before him, mascara tears streaming from her eyes. "_You filthy piece of crap!_" she said, and he had been called so many worse things in his life that it was almost laughable, except the way she was trembling, he could tell this was a woman who never swore, who never spit, who never stepped off of her manicured suburban lawn if she wasn't wearing a string of pearls. This was his first look at Miriam Sharpe, and it wasn't an image he would ever forget.

"_Ma'am, I appreciate you're upset,_" he said, rubbing his cheek with a silk pocket handkerchief. "_But the New Warriors' recklessness had nothing to do with me._"

He remembers this moment, because he believed it when he said it. Yes, he was practicing for the talk shows, but he also meant the words, in an entirely self-assured and unexamined way. He was an Avenger. No one was going to mix Iron Man up with a lowlife freak like Speedball. And of course, the woman didn't even know he was Iron Man. He had managed to disclaim that identity quite well in the wake of the Avengers' last crisis.

Security would have hustled her off, then, and it would have been an unpleasant but minor moment in an already terrible day. Except that Miriam Sharpe wasn't a woman you could just hustle offstage. "_And who finances the Avengers? Who's been telling kids for years that they can live outside the law as long as they're wearing tights?_" The next words were almost lost in her rage. Tony just kept rubbing his cheek as she went on. "_Joe Billionaire says all you need are some powers and you can have a place in his private super-gang._" She threw the guard off and walked away under her own power, shooting back, "_The blood of my little Damien is on your hands._"

The guard shrugged an apology in Tony's direction, and then Happy Hogan came up from behind and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Poor lady," he said, "But you gotta do what you gotta do, boss."

_Damien,_ was the only thing running through Tony's head. _Damien. The astronaut._

*

"Damien Sharpe wanted to be an astronaut," said Tony, looking over the desk at the latest in a round of television talk show hosts. "He owned scale models of every single one of the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. He could recite their technical specifications from memory. I never had the good fortune to meet the boy, but he would have grown up to be exactly the sort of person I am eager to employ at Stark Industries. Who knows? I can't wear the armor forever." And then he turned, ever-so-subtly, toward the camera. "He could have been the next Iron Man, but thanks to the criminal recklessness of a few uncontrolled superhuman elements --" Now he looked down slightly and shook his head. "We'll never know."

"And," asked the host (a sympathetic one this time), "that recklessness. . .it's the kind of behavior you feel that Captain America is encouraging?"

Tony shook his head, making it clear that it pained him to say it. "That is _exactly_ the kind of behavior Captain America is encouraging."

Once he had told Damien's story, illustrated with a photograph of the smiling, buck-toothed kid, the host would flash up another picture, and another, and each time, Tony identified the Stamford victim by name, and gave a little fact about them.

It was a cornball routine, of course. Tony knew it was a cornball routine. Even Miriam, on some level, had to know it was -- although she told him that it brought tears to her eyes every time. She told him that 'the families' needed it, that she recorded every appearance, and burned DVDs to pass on to those whose loved ones were mentioned.

Tony had calculated the number of television appearances he would require in order to mention every victim by name. Six hundred and twelve names. He was making a good start of it, but they would have to keep this up for years. That was all right with him. The families loved it. America loved it, too. The Gallup Polls and the television ratings showed that it was working.

*

Tony walked off the set. The next guest, walking out of the green room, was one of those 'spin consultants,' a media-studies flak who had whored himself for red and blue alike. "Nice trick with the names," the man said. "I didn't catch you looking at a prompter. You know how to do your homework."

"I try," Tony said, reflecting that no one who knew him would have doubted that he would go into every appearance, fully prepared.

*

Here's what none of them know.

Tony doesn't need a prompter. He doesn't need a cue card. He comes to each appearance with hundreds of photographs, and hands them off to the staff at random. When he walks onto the set, he has no idea which picture will come up. Since Stamford, he has learned all of the faces, has learned the names that go with them. He has a file on each one, and when he starts to wonder whether there is a point to everything he does, he takes them out and he reads. He reminds himself.

The New Warriors were wannabe Avengers, because Tony Stark let them think it was all right. Because he and Cap reformed the team without government approval, because they thought they knew better. Because no one had looked the American people in the face and lied about who he was more often than Tony himself.

These are Anthony Stark's ghosts.

Six hundred and twelve of them.

He will never allow himself to forget.


End file.
